SHORT NEWS

SAT Day opportunity

For the first time in the history of Madera Unified, on April 10th, 2018, all of our 11th grade students were given the opportunity to take the SAT during their regular school day at no cost to them, funded using LCFF supplemental and concentration funds. The SAT is a college admission test that is accepted by all colleges nationally. Students who score well on the exam can obtain academic scholarships to attend both public and private colleges. Historically, students would have had to pay approximately $60 dollars to take the SAT on a nationally designated Saturday. Previously, students would have had to find their own transportation to SAT testing sites, possibly located outside of our school district, a potential difficulty for taking the exam at all. In 2017, 400 of our 11th grade students took the exam. In April of this year, thanks to our new “SAT Day” program, over 1,000 of our 11th grade students took the exam for free, a 600 student increase. Stephen Reed earned the top score of 1,550, landing him in the 99th percentile nationally. Isaac Duarte-Villa came in a 2nd with a overall score of 1510, and in 3rd place Jonathan Ibarra achieved an overall score of 1350. Scores like these allow our students to submit more competitive applications to schools like Harvard, Stanford, and Yale. This past school year, the district implemented our first practice SAT for all of our 8th and 9th grade students. Research has shown that more practice with these types of assessments, in addition to planning for improvement in personalized specific areas, could improve SAT scores by more than 200 points. By providing our students with opportunities to achieve higher SAT scores will allow many more to compete for college admissions to the schools of their choice. The “SAT Day” creates opportunities to access higher education that were previously unfathomable for too many of our youth. Imagine what our community could achieve by giving our students such a boost into adult life, with the knowledge that We Believe in them.